—Nothing, go on, she said, fascinated.
—Nothing I was just going to say . . . that passage in Cicero’s Paradoxa, where Cicero gives Praxiteles no credit for anything of his own in his work, but just for removing the excess marble until he reached the real form that was there all the time. Yes, the um . . . masters who didn’t have to try to invent, who knew what . . . ah . . . forms looked like, the um . . . The disciple is not above his master, but everyone that is perfect shall be as his master.
—Who said that? she asked after a pause, still looking fixedly at him.
—Yes, Saint Luke. He was the patron saint of painters.
—Was?
—Well I mean I guess he still is, isn’t he. Otto closed the book and stood up looking for a place to put it.
—Is that all? she asked finally.
—All what?
—About Flemish painters?
—Well Esther, I like them, and the . . . I mean the discipline, the attention to detail, the separate consciousnesses in those paintings, the sort of . . . I guess it’s both the force and the flaw of those paintings, the thoroughness with which they recreate the atmosphere, and the, I mean a painter like Memling who isn’t long on suggestion and inferences but piles up perfection layer by layer. But, well it’s like a writer who can’t help devoting as much care to a moment as to an hour.
—Otto . . . She got up and came toward him.
—But God devotes as much time to a moment as He does to an hour, Otto brought out abruptly, as though defending himself, or someone very close to him. She stood before him, looking into his face querulously.
—Esther . . .
—Do you have a cigarette? she asked, stepping back. He fumbled and gave her one, lit it for her, then got the package out and took one for himself.
—Esther, look, is something wrong? he asked as she sat down on the couch and started to turn pages of a book, without looking at the words.
—Nothing, it just gets . . . I don’t know, she said, and started looking at the pages, running her thumb down the lines as though seeking an answer there. He stood over her, blowing out smoke, as though the cigarette were an occupation in itself, until she said, —Here’s a lovely passage, it’s something of Katherine Mansfield’s, a review she wrote. She held it up and he took it as though he might find some solution there himself. —It’s too bad, such a lovely thing hidden away in an old review.
—Yes, he said, covetously, and read it again. He got out his pencil. She saw the book in his pocket and asked what it was.
—Spinoza, Otto answered taking it out. —I’m glad you reminded me, he lent it to me a long time ago, and just asked me if I’d leave it here.
Esther thumbed the pages. —Did you get all the way through it?
—Well, I mean not all the way really. We were talking about quiddity once, and he . . .
—About what?
—Quiddity, what the thing is, the thing itself, and he said that Kant says we can never know . . .
—Is this all you talk about? Quiddity, philosophers . . .
—But Esther . . .
—Doesn’t he talk about himself to you?
—Well, I mean in a way he’s always talking about himself, but he, you know, for instance when he said, But aren’t we all trying to see in the dark? I mean . . . you know.
—I know, she said, staring at her hands. —But he must say something about me?
Otto stood looking down at her hair, at her shoulders and the curve of flesh at her neck. He laughed, a slight, nervous, and confidential sound; and when he spoke his voice was more strained with casualness than before. —As a matter of fact, today he said sometimes he felt like the homunculus that ah, I forget, the Greek god of fire made, and then um another god criticized it because he hadn’t put in a little window where they could see its secret thoughts. She did not move, and when she remained silent Otto repeated his nervous sound of a laugh. —I mean, he didn’t mean anything, you know . . . What?
—I know, she repeated in a whisper.
—He didn’t mean . . .
—Do you know what it’s like?
—What what . . .
—Do you know what it’s like? Living with someone like him, living with him, do you know what it’s like? Do you know what it’s like, being a woman and living with him?
—But Esther . . .
—To come into the room, and see him staring, without blinking, just staring, not an insane stare but just sitting and looking? Last night he was sitting there, that way, and the music on the radio, I can still hear the announcer’s voice afterward because it was such a relief, it was the Suite Number One in C Major of Bach, and afterward all he said was, such precision. Such precision.
—But that’s true, it’s . . . Otto came down on the sofa beside her.
—Yes but it isn’t human . . . He put a hand on hers. —It isn’t a way to live, she said in the same dull voice, her hand dead under his. —It isn’t . . . is it strange that he has ringing in his ears? Is this dream of his strange, this damned damned dream he has? That after an hour’s silence he can say, The one thing I cannot stand is dampness . . . That’s all, it took him an hour to work that out. Strange? that he can drink down a pint of brandy, and be just as he was before. Nothing happens. Nothing happens, except he blinks even less. Yes, a . . . man of double deed, I sow my field without a seed . . .
—Esther, you mustn’t get so . . .
—When the seed began to blow / ’Twas like a garden full of snow.
—Look, it won’t last, he said taking both her hands. —He can’t just go on, like this.
—I know it, she said, moving her hands in his. —Sleeping, clutching his throat with both hands. I found him that way, when I got up in the night, sleeping on his face with both hands to his throat. I took them away, and when I came back, back from the bathroom he was like that again. Or jumping out of bed in the middle of the night, barefoot, and he comes back muttering something in Greek, apologizing, he’d gone to look up the word accusative. No, no, argue? We can’t even argue, he goes into the studio there and finishes the argument alone, I hear him behind the door, answering me. Damn all this business, these shapes and smells, I heard him one night, and a wife, he said, trembling before everything that doesn’t happen, weeping for everything we’ll never lose. Do they really know each other, do they really give anything to each other? or is all they have to share this . . . same conspiracy against reality they try to share with me?
—And . . . then what? Otto asked, when she paused, and her hands stilled.
—He said, You can change a line without touching it. She was silent until Otto started to interrupt, then, —Is she surprised? I heard him say. Why, I have to tell her why, good God do I always have to use words when I talk to her? Is she surprised to see me when she comes in? when she wakes in the morning and sees me there? She’s never been surprised. Everywhere, Esther said looking up slowly, —everything, as her eye caught a shiny magazine on the low table, —even there. There’s a story in that about a girl who goes to Spain, during Holy Week she meets the mother of a man she was in love with, then one night when she’s seen one of those holy processions with the Virgin in tears going by, she meets her old lover with his wife, the girl who took him away from her, and she forgives the girl.
—Yes, but that sounds . . .
—But all he could say is, What a . . . what rotten sentimentality, I can still hear his voice. What a vulgarizing of something as tremendous as the Passion, this is what happens to great emotions, this is the way they’re rotted, by being brought to the lowest level where emotions are cheap and interchangeable. Has there ever been anything in history so exquisitely private as the Virgin mourning over Her Son?
—But Esther, don’t you see that? Don’t you feel this . . . this way we’re all being corrupted, by . . .
—Don’t you know that I love him? she cried. —Do you think that there’s anything more . . . exquisitely private than . . . that, f
or me?
Otto found her head in his lap, and looking down upon it, stroked her hair. —Esther, he whispered, —Esther . . .
—To have him say, she commenced again, sitting up as suddenly, —if something, if I . . . if we talk about having children, and to have him look surprised, and then to, . . . once, once he said, A daughter, a daughter? he said, a daughter! and he said . . . I don’t remember, and then it disappeared, then what we’re talking about just disappears, it . . . He studied to be a priest. Did you know that? To be a minister, did he ever tell you that? He, and then that’s what I say, I say that, and I ask him why aren’t you then? Why aren’t you a priest, if you are one! because, because I want him to . . . I want him to . . .
—Esther . . . Otto reached out to hold her, but she drew back.
—And then as though it was the most real thing in the world he says, Because I should rebe . . . I should believe in my redemption that way, because I should have to believe that I am the man for whom Christ died.
Otto took out a cigarette. He lit it, and taking it from his lips quickly said, —I’m sorry. Unprofaned, the word Christ embarrassed him.
She took it from his outstretched fingers. —You shouldn’t apologize, she said. —You could at least pretend that you lit it for me.
He smiled, and leaned toward her. But his smile made hers suddenly the less real, less a smile as its life drained from behind it while the smile remained fixed on her lips; then her lips opened again and it disappeared. Esther stood up, away from him, smoking, and he took out another cigarette. —For a woman, she said, —do you think it’s easy for a woman? She was turned toward the half-open door of the studio. —Reality! He talks about reality, despair. Doesn’t he think I despair? Women get desperate, but they don’t understand despair. Despair as a place to start from, he said to me. And that. And that. She turned on Otto, who looked uncomfortable and as quickly brought his cigarette to his lips. Hers hung forgotten in her hand, running the smoke up her wrist. —Just being a woman, do you know what a woman goes through? You don’t, but do you? Can you imagine? Just trying to keep things going, just . . . A man can do as he pleases. O yes, a man! But a woman can’t even walk into a bar alone, she can’t just get up and leave things, buy a boat ticket and sail to Paris if she wants to, she can’t . . .
—Why not? Otto asked, standing.
—Because they can’t, because society . . . and besides, physically, do you think it’s easy then, being a woman?
—No no, no I don’t. Otto stepped back as though threatened with
it.
—And do you know the worst thing? she went on. —Do you know the hardest thing of all? The waiting. A woman is always waiting. She’s . . . always waiting.
He took a step toward her, where Esther had started toward the door of the studio. —Do you remember once, when you first knew us? she asked, —when you’d been out with . . . him, and seen a painting, a portrait of a lady, you said it was quite beautiful, a woman looking just beyond you, her hands folded across in front of her shutting you out, she was holding up a ring . . .
—Yes, yes I remember it, he said, relieved at the calm in her voice. —A . . . um, Lorenzo di Credi, though he said as a painting . . .
—Do you want to see this picture of his mother? she demanded.
—I remember he said, that picture reminded him of his mother, on account of the hands or something.
—Do you want to see it? she challenged. —Yes, she must have been a very beautiful woman.
—Really? I mean, is there a picture of her?
Esther stood with a hand on the knob of the door, but moved no further. —He has one he started, fifteen vears ago. It’s just hanging in there, she added dully.
—Well . . . Otto stepped back. —No don’t bother, it isn’t important.
—Isn’t important! He can’t paint me, because of her we can’t travel, to Spain because she’s there. She turned to the dark doorway. —At night, night after night he works in there. Works? she repeated. —He’s in there, night after night. That music, night after night. She stared in. —And to hear him, Damn you! damn you! Oh, talking to himself he said. Yes. He’s in there now.
Otto came up behind her and took her shoulders. —Esther, he said, holding her. Then she coughed, his cigarette so close to her face. —I work at night too, he said, trying to recover her reasonably.
—It’s this crazy Calvinistic secrecy, sin . . .
—Esther it isn’t the secrecy, the darkness everywhere, so much as the lateness. I mean I get used to myself at night, it takes that long sometimes. The first thing in the morning I feel sort of undefined, but by midnight you’ve done all the things you have to do, I mean all the things like meeting people and, you know, and paying bills, and by night those things are done because by then there’s nothing you can do about them if they aren’t done, so there you are alone and you have the things that matter, after the whole day you can sort of take everything that’s happened and go over it alone. I mean I’m never really sure who I am until night, he added.
—Alone! She moved, enough that he loosed his grasp.
—That sort of funny smell, he said, standing uncertainly, then he took a step inside, as though he had left her of his own will, saw a piece of paper on the floor and picked it up, as though it were that he was after all the time. —And I mean things like this, he said holding it up, —these sort of magical diagrams and characters and things he makes . . .
—That, she said looking at it, —it’s just a study in perspective.
—Yes, but, when you look in there, don’t you think of things like . . .
—It’s nothing, it’s just a study in perspective. The little x is the vanishing point.
—Yes but, I mean today we were talking about alchemy, and the mysteries that, about the redemption of matter, and that it wasn’t just making gold, trying to make real gold, but that matter . . . Matter, he said matter was a luxury, was our great luxury, and that matter, I mean redemption . . .
She swung him round. —Redemption!
—Esther . . . She had her arms round his neck. He held her, at the waist, so quickly that he withdrew his thumb which had touched her breast and stood with hands paralyzed, not daring to return it. —That sort of funny smell, he murmured after a moment.
—Lavender, she said to him. Then she asked, —And you too, you want to be alone?
He looked at her face which was very close, perhaps too close to appreciate the slight raising of his eyebrow, and the complementary urbanity of his faint smile. —It’s rather difficult to shed our human nature, he said. She broke away from him, and stood in the center of the room looking at him. —Esther, what’s the matter?
—That too, you got that from him too! Didn’t you?
—Well, I . . . sort of, I mean . . .
—What. Go on.
—Well we were talking about a philosopher, Otto said helplessly, —Pyrrho, about Pyrrho of Elis, who said that one state was as good as another, and one day his students found him treed by a dog and they taunted him, and he said that, It’s difficult to shed our human nature.
She let him finish, and then said, —You don’t have to repeat all these things to impress me, Otto, I’ve heard them all, from him.
—But . . .
—About Flemish painting, and stringency of suffering, that God cares as much about a moment as he does for an hour, I’ve heard it all from him. She paused, looking Otto over, and then said, —Do you know what he asked me once? when we first met you?
—What? Otto asked, coming toward her.
—He asked me if I thought you could be homosexual.
Otto stopped. —But . . . what? What did he . . . and what did you say?
—I said I didn’t know, you might be.
—But Esther, why should he, I mean you, you didn’t, did you think that? I mean why would you ever think . . . He stopped, before her, beside the couch.
—You never tried to kiss me, she said.
&
nbsp; —But I, he . . . I mean Esther, Esther. I love you, Esther. With that, Otto commenced a silence which he broke himself minutes later. —Esther, we can’t, I mean not . . . suppose he should come in?
She drew her head back, resting it on the arm of the sofa, and looked at him. —Suppose he should? she said.
Late that night, Gordon stood poised in the doorway of a summer cottage, about to speak. (As a matter of fact, Gordon had been holding that screen door open for about a week now, laboring, as one hand shaped the air, to reduce Priscilla with some painful profundity.) Suddenly, in a rush of typewriter keys, he spoke. Gordon: Suffering, my dear Priscilla, is a petty luxury of mediocre people. You will find happiness a far more noble, and infinitely more refined state. Priscilla sobbed, and someone poùnded on the floor from below, warning Gordon that he had said enough. There was, however, little chance of Gordon’s going on tonight. At a stroke, Gordon had recovered his former assurance, and his former height. He had acquired a few new habits (could, for instance, put away a pint of brandy without showing it) but, for all urbane intents and purposes, his profundities were to be spoken with that withering detestable cleverness of old, delivered with his former ease, as he dressed with his former elegance. What was more: Gordon had discovered Art.
The screen door slammed closed behind him; and Otto got up to look in the mirror. Then his expression changed, as he took his eyes from its reflection, and he hurriedly picked up a pencil and scribbled, Gd crs as mch fr mmnt as fr hr—wht mean?
Zosimus, Albertus Magnus, Geber, Bernhardus Trevisanus, Basilius Valentinus, Raymond Lully, Khalid ben Yezid, Hermes Trismegistus, have they been transcended by our achievement? For today (at a cost of 10,000 an ounce) it is possible to transmute base metal into gold.
The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) Page 19
